Basketball Diaries

I was devastated when I was cut from the Holy Name High School basketball team during my freshman and sophomore years, thus ending any hoop dreams I may have had. My problem was that I thought I had more game than I actually did. In retrospect, I am glad I was cut.

As a junior, I was asked by friends to play on a (non-school related) team in a tournament open to anyone. Our team consisted of some high school team players, and some scrubs like myself.

We were immediately eliminated, and I remember playing against a team full of complete badasses. Some of them ended up playing on big-time college teams, and one of them turned out to be this guy, who scored 26 points the other night against the Dallas Mavericks. I remember trying to "guard" (if you can call it that) this 5"5' dude when he would drive the lane. Let's just say things got very ugly very quickly, as evidenced by the number of times they would block our shots, and the ball would sail 30+ feet into the roaring crowd, who were all there to see the Cleveland all-star team wreck shop against us.

As they used to say on The Wire, I'm pretty sure that, even back then, I was slower than a white man in slippers.

But I can totally beat Earl Boykins in a time trial.

Right?

How is it...

...that sometimes I am asked if I am ever going to "grow out" of bike racing?

Or that people often think it is "immature" for adults to wear band clothing?



Yet it is not immature for adults everywhere to be obsessed by, or for a metropolitan newspaper to devote 25% of its front page and a four-page pull-out section to, a perennially losing football team.

Weird.